15.1 Urgency, Fact Gathering & Document Review

A new client's first phone call rarely arrives with a clear legal label attached. It arrives as a story — a notice in the mail, a letter from an insurer, an argument with a landlord — and the paralegal's first job is not to solve the legal problem yet. It is to figure out how much time is actually left before something is lost forever. On the P1 exam, urgency-assessment questions test judgment under a fact pattern, not memorized deadlines alone, so understanding why a deadline matters is as important as knowing the number.

Why Urgency Comes First

Every other skill in this chapter — issue spotting, theory of the case, ADR strategy — depends on there being a live file to work with. A brilliant legal analysis delivered after a limitation period expires helps no one. Because the P1 exam is open-book, it does not reward simply knowing that a deadline exists somewhere in the materials; it rewards recognizing, from the fact pattern, that a clock is running and knowing where to look it up quickly.

The Limitations Act, 2002: The Default Clock

Ontario's Limitations Act, 2002 supplies the default civil limitation framework:

• Basic limitation period — 2 years. A claim must generally be commenced within two years of the day the claimant discovered the claim (knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that the injury occurred, was caused by an act or omission of the defendant, and that a proceeding would be an appropriate remedy).
• Ultimate limitation period — 15 years. Regardless of when discovery occurs, most claims are barred 15 years after the act or omission took place, subject to specific statutory exceptions (for example, for persons under a disability).

Discoverability means the clock does not necessarily start on the date of the incident — it starts when the claimant knew or ought to have known the key facts. A paralegal who assumes "two years from the accident" without asking when the client actually learned of the loss can misjudge urgency in either direction.

Shorter Clocks: Tribunals and Regulatory Regimes

Many of the forums a paralegal practises in front of run on much shorter timelines than the Limitations Act default:

The exam frequently tests whether a candidate recognizes that a short tribunal or notice deadline has already started running, even while the general civil limitation period looks comfortable. Urgency is forum-specific, not one-size-fits-all.

Structuring the Intake Interview

Before any legal analysis, a disciplined intake follows a consistent order:

1. Conflicts check first. Before hearing confidential details, confirm the paralegal (and firm) has no conflict of interest with the prospective client or an existing client. This protects both the prospective client's confidences and the firm's ability to act.
2. Open the file properly. Record the client's identity, contact information, the date of the meeting, and an initial retainer scope once conflicts clear.
3. Let the client tell the story once, uninterrupted. Then rebuild it as a chronology — a dated, sequential list of events. Chronologies expose gaps, contradictions, and, critically, the date that starts a limitation clock.
4. Ask targeted follow-up questions once the chronology exists: Who else was present? What documents exist? Has any notice, letter, or claim number already been received?
5. Identify capacity and instruction issues early. If there is any indication the client's ability to instruct is impaired, note it immediately — this affects both urgency and later duties under the Rules of Conduct.

Fact Gathering Beyond the Client

The client's account is a starting point, never the finished record. A thorough fact-gathering plan reaches for:

• Documents — contracts, notices, correspondence, invoices, medical or repair records, insurance policies, photographs
• Witnesses — identified early, before memories fade, with contact details preserved
• Public and institutional records — court dockets, land registry searches, corporate searches, municipal records
• Experts, where the matter requires specialized opinion evidence (e.g., an engineer's report in a property dispute)

Primary sources (the original document, the eyewitness) are always preferable to secondary accounts (a client's summary of what a witness said). Where only secondary information exists at intake, the fact-gathering plan should include steps to convert it into primary evidence.

Document Review Discipline

As documents arrive, review discipline keeps the file usable months later:

• Build a chronological, indexed document list as documents come in — not at the end. This becomes the backbone of both the theory of the case (Section 15.3) and any disclosure obligations (see Chapter on litigation process).
• Screen for privilege and confidentiality before documents are shared externally; not everything a client hands over is automatically producible to the other side.
• Check completeness and authenticity — is this the final signed version? Are there missing pages, redlines, or prior drafts that matter?
• Track undertakings and deadlines generated by documents themselves — a notice with a response date, a lease with a renewal window, an insurance policy with a proof-of-loss deadline.

Common Exam Traps

• Treating "open book" as a substitute for triage judgment: the exam still expects the candidate to recognize urgency from the fact pattern before reaching for the materials.
• Applying the 2-year Limitations Act default to a tribunal or notice period that is actually much shorter.
• Confusing the date of the incident with the date of discoverability.
• Skipping the conflicts check because "it's just an intake meeting."

Key Takeaways

• The Limitations Act, 2002 sets a 2-year basic (discoverability-based) and 15-year ultimate default — but many tribunals and notices run on far shorter clocks.
• Urgency assessment must happen before deep legal analysis; it determines whether there is time to do anything else.
• Conflicts checks come before substantive intake, not after.
• Chronology-building is the fastest way to surface the fact that starts (or already started) a limitation clock.
• Document review is a continuous, indexed discipline — not a one-time task performed just before a hearing.